


Ask for answers

by Dionysisch



Series: Inevitable destruction [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 16:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1273204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dionysisch/pseuds/Dionysisch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been 5 weeks, 2 days, 6 hours and 27 minutes...<br/>Sherlock Holmes does not quite grasp <i>Jim</i>, but he can't help sticking around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask for answers

Is it a waste of time? Please tell me if you mind  
me dipping into useless sentimentality.  
(TV on the Radio)

It’s been 5 weeks, 2 days, 6 hours and 27 minutes.  
Not that he has bothered keeping track of time.  
It is just a fastidious, uninterrupted count inside his head dangerously assuming the shape of care.  
How annoying, how weak. Even more pathetic with the added consideration that, by now, he’s capable of tracing back only by memory each crease in Jim’s hand, the pattern of his skin, his average body temperature and beats per minute. He does not _want_ to remember. Data happens to stick to the walls of his skull with an odd resiliency, an unexpected mental shrine to Jim Moriarty as a physical reality rather than an idea or a name behind the most exciting cases of his entire career.  
Despite his stuffy resistance, Sherlock comes around often. They are not planned visits nor invitations. From the first time he lured him into his apartment, Jim has accurately avoided any type of virtual communication or allusion at the perspective of spending time with the detective. Sherlock just happens to be there. Jim lets him, always. When he’s overwhelmed by the idiocy of the world, by Mycroft’s prying, by boredom - even in the middle of the night. Sherlock would drape that ridiculously dramatic coat over his shoulders, sulk into a cab, and open a door that never resisted his attempts at seeking solace. Sometimes Jim would sleep for hours before finding Sherlock sitting on his sofa with a sulk he had been wearing for God knows how long. In that case the criminal would just sit by his side and think with Sherlock, in silence.  
They didn’t do much, to be fair. Not having to use words to communicate his state of mind to someone else, dismissing any translation or simplification because they were unnecessary, had been for Sherlock a welcome change from his usual attempts at interactions with the rest of the world. Jim would understand anyway. It brought a strange kind of relief that Sherlock found himself craving more and more often. Watching his brain unfold quietly in the silence of Jim’s white, white house - he had started to understand the concept, it helped him think - was possibly the most genuine release Sherlock had granted himself in a long time. Sometimes they would talk in very vague terms about existence, between Jim’s quiet sighs and slightly slouched shoulders and Sherlock’s positivism.  
Other times they had spent hours watching television. In that case Jim would sit very close, curled on the sofa against him, and whisper quietly his questions, challenging Sherlock with deductions. _Do you think they could be related? Tv host’s weapon of choice?_ It made Sherlock feel at the center of attention. As if there was nothing else of interest for the other man but demonstrations of his genius. So they would go on, until Jim leaned with his head against Sherlock’s shoulder and announced that he was tired. Or Sherlock would leave at the call of a text.  
His time with Jim had revealed details about the man he had not expected. Jim is very soft, very quiet. Sometimes his presence could rather go unnoticed, but his delicateness does not betray the power of a mind whose magnetic charm keeps Sherlock on edge. His moods are sudden, irregular. He shifts from a sense of melancholy that seems to spring from his bones to this playful, amused flirtation Sherlock is hardly capable of keeping up with.  
His eyes are much lighter than he had expected. For some reason, all Sherlock could remember from their meeting at the pool was darkness, and the most perverse gleam of joy, curiosity. Threat. When they were sitting in silence Jim would often look up at him and simply study Sherlock, as if making sure he was there. He doesn’t do anything, just stare. Jim stares at him as if he’s asking something there must be no need to voice - politeness? fear? -, but Sherlock cannot quite put together. It verges on a plea, a silent request the detective perceives but does not decipher. It’s always there, constant. Asking, not getting. It lasts a few seconds before Jim turns away, defeated and broodier.  
Tonight they are cooking.  
It’s not about the production of food in itself - _since when has either of them ever bothered with regular meals, anyway?_ It’s an act of kindness and honesty on Jim’s side, who has decided to give Sherlock something to think about in the details of his past life. He says that it is only fair, after years of observation.  
So they are cooking.  
With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows, Jim is cutting the vegetables and staring intently at his hands, the knife, the small pieces on the cutting board. He tells him about his grandmother. She would have him help her in the kitchen when he was a child, and he would cut vegetables. Suddenly he’s rolling his eyes and looking up at Sherlock with a vaguely amused grin on his lips. “Before you say anything, this has nothing to do with murder and plotting.”  
Sherlock only cocks up his brows, feigning surprise.  
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me that wasn’t exactly your train of thought.”  
“I wouldn’t insult you with such ordinary mental associations.”  
Sherlock quips back, gaining another of Jim’s look-request that he cannot quite put together and leave him feeling vaguely helpless. He has stopped cutting and he looks at him with his eyes wide, breathing slowly. Then, all of a sudden, he’s chuckling softly by himself and he’s back to his peppers.  
“So. Vegetables.” Sherlock breaks the silence again, feeling kind of helpless standing there in the kitchen, looking at Jim that gestures to another cutting board. “You know where the rest is, Sherl,” he mumbles, and it’s so familiar and normal and comfortable that for a moment Sherlock wonders, while trying to figure out a decent cutting angle for this aubergine, how he ended up in Moriarty’s kitchen helping him cook. And why he doesn’t feel out of place in the slightest, or bored.  
“Yes. I was a bored child. She would give me something to do for a few hours,” he said. It wasn’t much of a sense of affection he could listen to in his words, but that veil of nostalgia Jim seemed to enjoy dipping into at times. “Have you ever tried doing something not clever? Gardening, for example,” he drops there, conversational.  
Sherlock simply shakes his head, furrowing his brows in thought. What would be the point, with a brain like his? Jim looks up at him and sighs, heavy.  
“You should try.”  
Silence, again.  
It doesn’t feel unwelcome and Sherlock lets it sit between them for a while.  
For being rather unapt at cooking and having only started growing comfortable around each other, they are surprisingly coordinated in such a small environment, and they happen to brush past each other a few times, moving around under Jim’s direction.  
“You should wear the apron, you know.”  
Jim is actually wearing one. He doesn’t look out of place or odd, just a person in his expensive, immaculate kitchen who is too aware of his looks to risk staining something. Sherlock is fighting against tomatoes while proudly sporting the same clothes.  
“No.”  
His answer gains him a chuckle from Jim. And the other man drops his knife to pick a red apron from the drawer. He is standing at Sherlock’s side and handing it to him.  
“Don’t be so vain, Sherl. I will appreciate your presence just the same.”  
“No.”  
“Buzzkill.”  
Jim pouts, but leaves him alone again, humming softly to himself as he goes over the recipe again.  
When he turns to reach the oven Sherlock is standing behind him and he raises his brows, initially startled, confused. Sherlock doesn’t know what to do with himself but there’s always that thought at the back of his head. Triggered by the disappointment, perhaps. By the frustration of five weeks spent trying to figure out an answer to a question he doesn’t want to voice. What do you want, James? What do you want me to answer?  
Sherlock is almost scary, standing tall, and Jim looks at him with eyes wide. Tiny, helpless, cooking Jim with his apron and his eyes that are playful, and disappointed, sometimes distant. Always asking.  
Sherlock is motion, instinct, a violence that crushes against Jim’s soft, vain resistance. He lets him close because he can’t see himself otherwise, because he has been asking Sherlock to do so - to find answers for himself to questions he doesn’t dare to voice. It’s a movement dictated by frustration, irritated, annoyed. Close, but without the safe calculations that should accompany his gestures.  
He dives into Jim with imprecision. Daring, he’s assumed a knowledge of the other man’s features that is taken aback, vaguely surprised by the light tickle of stubbled cheeks against his palms. Doesn’t stop him from pressing his hands on his face to hold him still, when he acts - he dares! Presses their lips together angrily and closes his eyes, stops breathing.  
It’s a kiss and it’s relatively brief. Jim has only so much time to exhale a surprise ‘oh' and yield, yield, yield, let his posture soften again and his breath linger on lips that burn and tickle and are so desperately real now that Sherlock has kissed them. It makes him want to preserve them from ever touching anything again, it makes him want to cry. None of this makes it to the surface, crawling its way through the skin of his face that is motionless because Sherlock is holding it, because he could never break the spell of warm hands keeping him in place when he has spent years floating in misery and aimlessness. When Sherlock breaks the kiss Jim’s eyes are big, but quieter. Sherlock reads confusion, thoughtfulness. A state of agitation betrayed by a slight alteration in his breathing pattern.  
Sherlock the actor, the show-off, the vain creature desperate to impress. The scientist seeking the secret of life. Or better, the secret behind those eyes that stare at him and ask, ask, ask. It looks like a demonstration. When he pulls back, Sherlock stares with brows vaguely lifted and a strange sense of pride fighting against his accelerated pulse and the part of his brain that is too busy analyzing the texture of Jim’s lips. Are you happy now? he seems to ask, taking a step back before one hand goes to touch his lower lip.  
No response from Jim. Jim that is quiet and blinking slowly and turning to the cutting board again. He leaves him in his own self-induced confusion and his rushed pulse, and it’s only a few moments later that Sherlock registers that he’s doing so with a giggle.


End file.
